


Little Numbers

by peppermintzebra



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 00:03:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1166208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peppermintzebra/pseuds/peppermintzebra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jehan and Grantaire go somewhere warmer for the weekend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Numbers

Grantaire woke up for no particular reason. A breeze was winding its way through the open window into their sparse little hostel room. Sunlight slanting into the room indicated it was late morning, but there’s no urgency to get up just yet. Keeping his eyes closed, Grantaire could hear bike bells, muffled conversations, and children playing football in one of the wider side alleys.

When Jehan first swept into their living room last week, raving about cheap tickets to Barcelona, Grantaire almost didn’t agree to come. The new semester had just begun and he was already falling behind on class work, his art suffering from the post-Christmas lull. The memory of Enjolras buttoned up in his signature red coat, backlit by fairy lights and smiling gently at the first winter snow had been a hard high to come down from after the holidays. Back to the same old; new year, new bottles of the same drink.

Jehan, not content to sit in their artistic slump, sought for them both the warmer climes of Spain and booked them round trip tickets and a two-person hostel room in the span of thirty minutes. All Grantaire had to do was pack a bag.

He threw a couple of sketchbooks and pencils into his duffel, and at the last minute remembered to grab his toothbrush. Jehan’s tickets truly were cheap; they spent the bus ride to the out-of-the-way Charles de Gaulle airport composing melodramatic goodbye letters to their friends, emphasizing their deep regret at missing the weekly movie night as they will be gone for the full weekend. Try not to miss them too terribly, love and best regards Monsieurs Prouvaire et Grantaire.

Grantaire’s thumb hovered over Enjolras’s contact until Jehan took the phone out of his loose grasp and pressed send.

A bumpy plane ride and a confusing, half-mimed conversation with a bus driver later and they stumbled into their hostel at some unholy hour of the morning. Too tired to dress their beds, Grantaire wrapped one of the covers loosely in his sheets and Jehan half-heartedly tossed his sheet out on the bottom bunk, sprawling across the bed in the process. They’ll probably ignore the top bunk for the rest of the trip. Grantaire shut off the lights, accidentally kicked their bags that were left by the door, and crawled into the bed, throwing the covers over them both. Jehan stirred enough to wind his arm around Grantaire’s waist; they were asleep in seconds.

Now, Jehan bounced onto the bed, a toothbrush in his mouth while his hands were preoccupied with a fountain pen and one of his numerous black journals. He was still dressed in yesterday’s clothes but his long, strawberry blonde hair hung in loose strands, a curtain draping down his shoulders. It was moments like these that made Grantaire’s heart swell with such affection that he curses whatever gods and deities exist that he could not love Jehan as he deserved.

Grantaire sat up and rubbed the sleep grit out of his eyes. He laughed at Jehan through his hands when he nearly dripped toothpaste on his poem.

“Can I read what you wrote?”

“Shh. It’s not ready yet.”

They spent the first day challenging Barcelona’s best tourist attractions. Grantaire used up half his phone’s memory snapping pictures of Jehan in the Sagrada Família, his cheeks and long, lithe body type seeming at home with the sweeping high ceilings and sharp angles. At Park Güell they played with local and tourist children, racing along Gaudí’s serpentine bench. Grantaire was shocked to find out that he never knew Jehan couldn’t whistle; Jehan impressed him instead with a flawless dramatic reading of select works by Catalan poets. At the rock formations, Jehan goaded Grantaire into posing like America’s Next Top Model, filling up his own phone with silly photos.

Grantaire thought he saw Enjolras once, outside Casa Batlló when a strong wind that stirred up papers and a chiffon skirts caused him to turn against the gust. A familiar lush of blonde curls in a crowd of unfamiliar faces. Grantaire got just close enough to see that the person held himself relaxed and loose. He had to turn away.

That night they filled up on colorful tapas and almost made themselves sick on fruity, sweet sangria before returning to the hostel. Grantaire went straight to his bag and camped on the floor with his sketchbooks and charcoal, filling pages and pages with sketches of sweeping architecture and beautiful crowds of people. Jehan showered first and cocooned himself in the covers, all drooping eyelids and fighting off sleep to watch Grantaire work. It seemed like hours later when Grantaire set his pencils down to wash his hands. He kissed Jehan on the cheek and turned off the lights.

Their last day in Barcelona was spent relaxing. They pooled their remaining Euros to rent a bike for the day, taking turns pedaling and sitting on the passenger seat. They biked along the beach for hours to soak up the rest of the sunshine before picking a bench looking out to the sea. They parked the bike and sat back to back. Jehan pulled out his journal and turned back to the same page, taking a green fountain pen to revise the poem he wrote the day before. Grantaire sketched the waves.

“Can I read it now?”

“Almost. It’s still not quite right.”

Later, Grantaire held Jehan tight as he cried at the airport. People probably thought one of them was leaving the other to go across the ocean or something. When his sniffles became more frequent than his rattling breaths, Grantaire pulled back to wipe his face.

“We can come back any time.”

“It won’t be the same. It can only ever be close to the same, and that would be even more terrible.”

They sat on the linoleum floor against an outer wall of the airport, waiting to board. Grantaire whistled quietly and stroked the head of strawberry blonde hair leaning against his shoulder. Jehan took out the same poem and wrote several more lines, crossing out much more. Grantaire smiled when he recognized the new lines; they contain the last few days in the history of their relationship.

Jehan sucks in a rough breath, irritated. “I keep wanting it to flow simply, because it _is_ simple, and easy, but it’s also beautiful and to convey beauty is to make things complex.”

“Keep working at it. We still have time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the music video for "Little Numbers" by Boy.


End file.
